


An Epilogue in Dreams

by AQLM



Category: Mass Effect, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, F/F, Love, Some Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-07 22:11:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20472182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AQLM/pseuds/AQLM
Summary: Dr. Chakwas has found happiness in the arms of Hannah Shepard. But there is a darkness within that she must face and that Hannah must accept. An unexpected sequel to Distractions (https://archiveofourown.org/works/13658493)





	An Epilogue in Dreams

She is there again. She holds her breath as long as she can, ignoring the burning in her chest, ignoring the frantic beating of her heart, until her biology betrays her. Her body loses the battle against her will, forcing her to gag and draw in the next lungful of fluid. She struggles against the narrow walls of the chamber as rank liquid invades her mouth and bathes her with its terrible mixture of fear, oxygen, and blood. 

She chokes her screams into bubbled whispers, hearing the same sounds echoing around her as the rest of the crew suffers in turn. She is a healer, a rescuer of damaged and lost souls, and their powerless sobs of despair torment her further. But still...their muffled anguish is better than the mechanical hum followed by screams as acid eats away flesh. Her horror every time she is glad someone else dies compounds her powerlessness with shame.

Another breath as she curses her weakness, curses the collectors, curses Shepard for abandoning her. If only...She feels the tube rattle and heat surround her. Her luck has run out. She rips her dulled fingernails against the interior of the prison, futilely clawing at the ruts she had already dug into the sealed compartment. 

Her fingers find soft flesh and she struggles against the body pressed against her back. A warm breath in her ear, whispering, “Shhh, shhh,” replaces the hiss of the apparatus. A hand massages the base of her spine. The dream dissolves like a settler in a vat. She blinks her eyes open and stares at the starscape beyond the cabin window. No tears. Just empty shaking.

Her partner does not say, “It is okay,” because she knows it is not. She does not say, “You are safe now,” because she knows she is not. She does say, “I am here.” She does say, “You are not alone.” 

These words are not a talisman or incantation to ward off the dreams, but they push back the jagged edge of the memory enough for her to relax. She worships each breath of air, the scent of her lover, the brush of fingers making their slow way up and down her body, the slight chill in the room driven away by a blanket pulled up over them. 

“That dream again, my love,” murmurs Hannah. “It has been some time.”

“It’s the anniversary of the end of the war. It brings up certain…emotions.” She fails at seeming dismissive. “I cannot say I enjoy these forays into my memory of the collector ship.” 

“Do you want to talk about it?”

She hesitates. Hannah has asked twice but stopped when the denials were flat and accusatory. Karin was content to never speak of them again. Now, as the sensation of her lungs being plunged into a bath of horrors still lingered, she found herself wanting someone to hear her pain. 

She nods and Hannah shifts her arms so she could look her in the face. Close enough to touch, not so much that she would be stifled. She swallowed and turned away.

“We – your daughter and I – had just finished raiding the derelict reaper…”

\--

Hannah knows Shepard will be awake. The baby has not sleeping well again, typical and temporary, reassures Aethyta, and Shepard has been taking the night watch this week after the festivities. They meet on the Presidium, Savannah wrapped up in a cloth across Shepard’s back. Lila doesn’t look maternal. She looks like Shepard’s father, Robert, holding a baby Lila when Hannah went back to the stars.

Hannah’s knuckles are white on the railing as her daughter brings concerned greetings. A midnight meeting with her mother was not the interruption Shepard had expected and the alarm, Hannah acknowledges, is not unwarranted. The lack of the admiral’s uniform and the rumpled hair convey a non-military crisis and trepidation at encountering her mother’s personal life crosses Shepard’s face as they stand together.

The baby coos and fusses. Lila brings up a finger for her to grab and the blue little girl grips it tightly, then gnaws on the knuckle with new teeth. The women smile in shared loving consternation. 

Lila’s breaths steel her in the murmuring air. “It’s Dr. Chakwas.” Her question is flat, non-inquisitive.

“It is. She told me…of…” Hannah finds herself at a rare reluctance to speak the nature of her pain. The military prides itself in delving into horrors, yet this one aches to be secreted away. 

“The collector ship?” She smooths down an unruly eyebrow to deflect her discomfort. “I had hoped…but you knew that,” she concluded her personal line of questioning internally. “Well.”

“I would ask how could you, but I fought the Reapers too. I know why. I know you needed every advantage. I know every minute you spent in safety testing was another minute the Collectors could use to obliterate another colony. But Lila,” She whipped her head and looked at her daughter and granddaughter. “How could you,” she hissed. She snapped her hand outwards.

Lila shook her head and said nothing.

“You abandoned your crew. Cerberus and alliance alike. These were soldiers in name only, most a step above mercs, who hadn’t seen combat after live fire drills. And Karin…” The woman curled up in Hannah’s bed, blessedly asleep after her retelling, grey hair and fine lines belaying her inexperience. “She hadn’t held a pistol in decades. A military doctor, emphasis on doctor.” 

“A military ship, emphasis on military,” retorted Shepard. “Manned by the most sophisticated AI ever created and by a crew who I trusted with my life.”

“A crew minus all the seasoned soldiers you took to the surface for whatever ridiculous mission the Illusive Man had conjured, leaving the ship dead in space broadcasting an enemy signal.” Hannah shouted enough to jolt Savannah from her half-sleep. The child prepared to wail but Lila shifted her weight again and shushed her back to rest.

“I had no way of knowing that. Even EDI didn’t until the Collectors struck. I could not have predicted it and even if I had, I would not have sacrificed any of those specialists for anything but the suicide mission. All thirteen of us landed on the collector base and we barely made it out. Could we have done it with twelve? With eleven? Fewer?”

The two soldiers locked uncomfortable eyes.

“I rescued them as soon as I could.”

“After going to untangle some geth politics.”

“I needed Legion focused.”

“And left your crew drowning in their own urine while you deleted some software.”

“Are you questioning my command decisions, admiral,” growled Shepard. “Or are you asking me to apologize for prioritizing the fate of the galaxy over your girlfriend.”

Hannah caught her voice and wrestled the anger back to the grief that spawned it. “Neither,” she replied slowly. “Every soldier understands the good of the mission comes first. Karin included, I suppose. I’ve sent men to die. And your father…”

“He was also sacrificed for the alliance. Would you be standing here with his captain demanding answers if the batarians had let them live?” 

“I suppose not.” Hannah fumbled with the hem of her garment. “This is harder, witnessing the intimacy of her suffering. She fights every night, Lila.”

Lila shrugs, not enough to wake Savannah, enough to jostle the vibrant fabric holding them together. “So do I. Depending on the day, so does Liara. Kaiden, when we bunked near each other on the first Normandy. Garrus, when holed up on Omega. Samara…” Her voice shuddered while her body remained still. “I crew a ship of nightmares. No one sleeps quietly. Neither do you.”

“We are marines. We know what awaits us when we wade into the enemy.”

“Nothing prepared us for the collectors or the reapers,” Lila whispered, her eyes fixed on the center of the citadel. “The twisted flesh, the stench of metal mixed with rotting blood, the screams of banshees, the fear, the desperation. Goddess…”

Shame flushed across Hannah’s face as the accusations dissolved in her throat. Here she was, railing against the savior of the galaxy for leaving one woman to suffer when Lila had carried the suffering of billions in her arms during the war. Berating her daughter over the nightmares of the woman she had only begun to love seemed ridiculous in retrospect. 

“I know,” said Hannah. She touched Shepard’s arm and then rest her head against her and the baby. Lila stiffened, but did not draw away. “I should never have blamed you for this. I don’t know what came over me.”

“It’s alright,” said Lila, snapping back from her private hellscape. “In some ways I’m glad. The only person who ever blamed me to my face was Joker. No one else, not even Dr. Chakwas, has had the guts.” She sighed and rested her head against her mother’s. Hannah became conscious of the height disparity, widened by aging. “Is she alright?”

Hannah tilted her chin down. “Eventually. I can quiet her usually before she wakes and soothe her after she awakens. But during…” She gritted her teeth. “The begging, Lila. The pleading. She’s so helpless. I can’t reach back to rescue her.”

“I know.” Lila’s voice, the syllables almost lost in the hum of the Citadel’s air scrubbers. “Watching the colonists dissolve while we slammed into the pods…”

She breathes out and the three are still. A little while and the two women depart, Hannah rubbing Savannah’s asleep knee and promising to come by tomorrow to visit their family.

Back in her hotel, she creeps in unsuccessfully. Karin is wrapped up in the blankets, a cocked eyebrow tracking Hannah across the rug. Her appreciative smirk at Hannah’s undressing is muted in the darkness and her embrace when Hannah enters the bed is less lustful than prior. They kiss and entwine nonetheless.

“Do I want to know where you went or will I correctly guess you went to yell at your daughter.”

Hannah groans in inflated annoyance and tries to kiss away the consternation in Karin’s voice. “Will you begrudge me the chance to aggravate my beloved only child when we are in the same place?”

“When you divulge our bedroom activities, yes,” responded Karin. Her disapproval frosts over Hannah’s ardor. “I do not speak of this openly, my heart. It is not appropriate for you to bring my troubles to Shepard’s table. She has suffered enough.”

Hannah traces the edges of Karin’s face with her fingertips, across the grey of her eyebrows, down the frame of her jaw. She imagines it flying apart before her eyes as she pounds futilely, impotent apologies meeting agonized betrayals. This woman who she has come to love, who she wanted to protect as she could not protect her husband or her husband. Karin’s shivering hand grasps hers and pulls it between them. 

“Don’t make me regret telling you, Hannah.” What would have been teasing is said in a cracked and fearful voice. 

“You shouldn’t.” Hannah finds the admiral within her. “There is nothing you can tell me that will scare me off, Karin.” 

The woman in her arms buries into her neck and thin rivulets of warmth run down Hannah’s skin. “That is hard to believe when your first act was to exit our bedroom.”

Hannah all but claws herself into Karin’s skin, gripping her with soldier’s strength. “Never ever doubt me, Karin. I will protect you and care for you as much as I can. As much as you will let me.”

They remain like that until Hannah gauges the mood appropriate. She turns her love over and begins administering a deep and desperate pleasure. Karin is not one for rapid arousal, even when they first rekindle their passion after months apart, and the turmoil slows her further. Hannah appreciates the challenge. She breaks apart the walls, the fear, the anger, the nightmare with her mouth. She cups her hands around the pale flesh and fixes her partner in place. She does not demand, as she might in the past. She asks, she offers, she provides, and she lets the body under her choose. In time, Karin shows what she wants and Hannah acquiesces. The orgasm, the culmination of the evening’s emotions, leaves Karin shuddering and sobbing. How much pleasure she experiences in the midst of her agony Hannah is too polite to ask. She holds the broken woman until they, together, are whole again. She never wants to let go.


End file.
